It is great folly to teach our children
(b) Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,
Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua,[1]
the science of the stars, and (a) the movement of the eighth sphere, before their own.
Τί πλειάδεσσι κάμοι
Τί δ᾽ άστράσι βοώτεω;[2]
(c) Anaximenes wrote to Pythagoras: “How can I meditate on the secrets of the stars, having death or slavery always before my eyes?’’[3] (For at that time the kings of Persia were preparing to war against his country.) So every one might say: “Being beset by ambition, avarice, temerity, and superstition, and having so many other enemies of life within me, shall I attempt to think about the movement of the world?”
(a) After he has been taught what helps to make him wiser and better, then let his tutor enlighten him as to what logic is, and physics,[4] and geometry, and rhetoric; and the branch of learning that he shall choose when his judgement is formed, he will very soon master. Let his lesson be given sometimes by talk, sometimes by books; sometimes his tutor will supply him with the very author suitable for that part of his instruction; sometimes he will give him the marrow and substance of the book all prepared. And if he be not himself sufficiently familiar with books to find in them the many admirable passages they contain fit for his purpose, some man of letters can be joined with him, who, whenever there is need, can supply him with such provisions as he may require, to deal out and dispense to his nursling. And who can doubt that this method of instruction is easier and more natural than that of Gaza?[5] In that are thorny
- ↑ What is the influence of Pisces, and of the constellation of bold Leo, and Capricornus bathed in the Hesperian Sea. — Propertius, IV, 1.89.
- ↑ What do the Pleiades matter to me, or the stars of Boötes? —Anacreon, XVII, 10.
- ↑ See Diogenes Laertius, Life of Anaximenes.
- ↑ The earlier editions, including 1588, have musique.
- ↑ Theodorus Gaza (1398-1478), a Greek scholar, was the author of a Greek grammar, and translator of Aristotle.
